A decade ago, Eduardo Greene abandoned his wife, his home and a successful restaurant, expecting a nightmare in pursuit of a dream

Instead, in May 1995 she borrowed $7,500 for the surgery from a friend and made a trip to Belgium to have it performed, a process that entailed great physical pain and left her incapacitated for months.

"I didn't do this for an emotional change," Greene insists. "This had nothing to do with what I was looking for in the way of a sex life. It wasn't going to be an enhancement."

But what she expected to be even more painful was the reaction of Dallas. Though many of her former colleagues in the Dallas restaurant business heard stories of Greene traversing the city in drag at various times, they dismissed the rumors as ungrounded personal attacks. Shock set in among them when her transition became public. "Eduardo digs women," says Shannon Wynne. "Eduardo was a lesbian, and this lesbian needed to transform. So yeah, it was a little different for me."

Mark Graham

As Eduardo, Greene's presence in a restaurant was pure gold. As Monica, Greene is the city's grandest hostess.

Mark Graham

Frankie Jimenez, a partner in Monica Greene's restaurants, says he heard rumors of Eduardo strolling through Dallas in drag. He didn't believe it.

"If he feels much more comfortable as he is now, God bless him," says restaurateur LucianoCola, who owns La Trattoria Lombardi and Antonio's Ristorante and worked with Greene at Les Rendez Vous. "He's got some...well, he doesn't have any balls, but he's got guts to do what he did."

In truth, whatever tempest there was over Greene's transformation, it was both tepid and short-lived. Greene has since concluded Dallas is unfairly maligned and stereotyped as a narrow, even bigoted metropolis. Instead, she says, it is both accepting and gracious.

"People in Dallas are passionate and generous," she says. "People always talk about how people in Dallas are prejudiced, and I don't think that...I participate in this community on every level. I get invited to do all kinds of things. And there has never been a time where I have been made to feel less."